


A Song of Wolves

by Cara_Loup



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-05
Updated: 2014-03-05
Packaged: 2018-01-14 14:30:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1269946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cara_Loup/pseuds/Cara_Loup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The call of the wild calls up memories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Song of Wolves

The howl of a dog, even heard echoing through the stony canyons of a nocturnal street in New York City, was infinitely different from the howl of a wolf in the wilderness ― or so Napoleon thought as he listened after the sound. The dog’s yelp trailed off on a night breeze, its final, keening note swallowed in the rush and swell of distant traffic. A tethered sound, Napoleon mused, that was what made all the difference. In the unpolluted air of the wild, a wolf’s howl could freeze every living thing within a radius of several miles, weaving the strangest spell of anticipation and dread. Wild things lost their ancient magic in the city.

Not all of them, very definitely, he amended. He only had to look at the still man by the window to know as much.

Napoleon couldn’t help wondering if similar thoughts were running through Illya’s head at the moment. He’d grown up in Russia after all, where in some regions wolves still hunted close to human habitats. Where people still saw in their quiet, grey shapes a shadow of the _djavol_ , stalking human souls. Superstition, his rational mind labeled it at once. But for all his later schooling, Illya had grown up in a climate thickened by such beliefs, where the material world was drenched in the presence of invisible things. An angel at my shoulder, a wolf at my door.

Napoleon shook his head with a quirky smile. How utilitarian and thoroughly rational a place like New York must seem to Illya. Sometimes he wondered if his best guesses even came remotely within reach of Illya’s shielded mind, the flow of thoughts behind that stubborn brow. Illya never talked about his childhood. And if, by accident, he let something slip, his expression solidified into unrevealing marble the next moment, barring every question.

Napoleon studied the quiet man, silhouetted against the window’s rectangle, and his smile faded. Partner, lover, familiar in every reaction, every move and instinct. And yet, at times like these, remote as if he’d just walked in from a vast, starless Russian night. Illya. The tension visible in the set of his shoulders, his profile edged by moonlight, mingling with a trace of city neon. Watching over the restless dark.

Only fifteen minutes ago, Illya had been about to fall asleep next to him, but he’d tensed at the first drifting note of the dog’s howl. Without a word, he’d slipped off the bed to move to the window, unconsciously falling into battle stance as he kept to the shadows.

Napoleon could see in him the lean, graceful shape of an arctic wolf, silver-furred and elusive. He couldn’t begin to guess his partner’s thoughts.

* * *

Snow, falling gently, in large flakes. The whip of bare branch and twig against his face. Illya Kuryakin blinked his eyes.

It was true, a fine snow presently drizzled out of unseen skies, but in a city like New York, the snow never stayed long enough to transform the world the way it did across open country. Nor did it have the power of silence. That vast, woolly silence, lingering everywhere between the trees and stretching upward into a bleak, swirling sky. In a different life.

Although the apartment was reasonably warm, Illya felt a thread of cold run down his bare back. Twenty stories below, the street lamps’ reflections glistened on wet asphalt like lesser moons. Warmed by the city’s steamy exhalations, the snow was melting even before it reached the ground. Down on the sidewalk, they’d call it rain.

Of course, at this late hour, the street was deserted except for occasional cars travelling at cautious speeds. There was, in all rationality, no reason to be watching over this most unrevealing of sights while his muscles grew stiff and cold. No reason besides memory, jolting through him with disturbing clarity.

The bark of a dog, scaling up into a broken howl.

The pattering of feet in the freshly fallen snow. Animal feet that tracked him with a light, ferocious certainty, almost without a sound while he stumbled and crashed gracelessly through a bramble thicket. He recalled that much. And the sense of being surrounded.

Petrified, in the middle of a small clearing that for a few moments became the end of his world. He couldn’t for the life of him remember how old he’d been, the name of the village, or why he’d taken off on his own in the gray haze of a midwinter dusk. Perhaps all those details had simply been wiped from memory with the first howl.

They moved everywhere between the widely spaced trees. Fangs bared, their breaths steaming white and hot into the crisp air. Not wolves. Dogs with long, snow-clotted fur and quivering snouts. But a young boy’s terror had turned their ragged, gray shapes into the phantoms of fairytale.

It wasn’t until many years later that he realized they’d been wild dogs, strolling in packs through the village outskirts, fighting over scraps of bone and frozen bread. Perhaps intending play when they’d hunted him into the tangles of snow-glazed brush and undergrowth.

To this day, he was afraid of dogs. For moments, he would walk again under the spell of his clouded boyhood skies, every breeze acquired a voice of its own, and a distant yowl became a song of wolves. It was one of the few fears he’d never learned to control. In a bizarre way, it connected him to his past.

Like a dog on a leash.

An ironic smile tugged Illya’s mouth. The truth was, he’d caught himself shamelessly indulging recollection, recently. And this particular memory... He considered it, turning it over within his mind, probing for the stark core of sentiment. A world frozen over with boundless terror. He’d never experienced that most existential of fears again until ―

Until Napoleon.

Until he’d first confronted the possibility that his partner might not return to him alive.

And Napoleon, again, was the reason why thoughts of home crept up on him at the oddest times, lighting their ambiguous warmth in the pit of his stomach. Because, after all those years of deliberate unattachment, he belonged again. It had unnerved him at first, because of the implications for himself. Compared to the bone-drilling cold of fear, it was nothing.

He knew, without turning, that right now Napoleon was watching him. He could always tell when those liquid brown eyes were on him, amused, concerned, or smoldering with decidedly carnal interest. On rare occasions, calm and searching.

"Your curiosity, Napoleon, will someday be your undoing," Illya said over his shoulder and listened with full concentration for a small noise, like rustling bedclothes, that would betray surprise, but there was none.

"Well, in your case," Napoleon answered without the faintest trace of irony, "that is certainly true. I _am_ undone."

* * *

"Is it gone?" Napoleon asked, his eyes following Illya across the room and back towards the bed. A muted, silky shine edged the slender frame and played briefly across the light hair.

"Is what gone?" Illya lowered himself into the disarray of sheets and pillows.

"Whatever you were watching from the window."

"It was gone before I went to look," Illya said enigmatically. Stretched out on his back, he slanted one last glance at the window that opened on a view of nondescript architecture and layered darkness.

"That could easily be said of far too many things in life," Napoleon remarked with a faintly quizzical inflection.

"Mm?"

It was obvious that Illya hadn’t been listening and further questions would most likely run into a dead end. Or lose themselves among the countless folds and crinkles in the sheet that Illya draped carelessly around and over himself. With a short, decisive motion, Napoleon shifted closer and slipped a hand beneath the cover. In the vague, colorless lighting, Illya’s shoulders and throat could have been sculptured from pale marble, and his skin had about the same temperature.

"You’re cold," Napoleon murmured, running his palm down the center of Illya’s chest.

The blond head turned, and Illya looked up at him, with the kind of gaze that could score any man to the marrow. Abruptly intense, watchful.

"Not much longer," he said after a moment, relaxing with a shrug.

There was a hint of innuendo in his tone, and Napoleon leaned over to brush their lips together, briefly lingering in the warmth of Illya’s breath that went out in a little rush, quietly startled.

"It could have been said of us, you know," he resumed. "Gone before we had a chance to look."

Illya blinked, catching up with his thoughts only after a second, his mouth settling into a wry smile. "No, I don’t think so."

"Because I’m too curious."

"And I’m too stubborn. I trust that we always would have... looked."

The words touched Napoleon strangely, with a quick, fierce tightening in his chest. Perhaps it was the total certainty in them, the curious blend of sobriety in Illya’s voice and challenge in his eyes. Whatever had drawn him to the window no longer seemed so important.

"You trust me," Napoleon said, the clear note of surprise in his tone prompting a pronounced sigh.

"With my life. You know that."

"Which one, Illya?" he teased. "You must have nine lives at least."

The fine mouth pursed thoughtfully. "It does feel like that, at times."

"Like a cat," Napoleon said absently, the better part of his mind concentrating where his fingers made their aimless journey across bare skin. "Or a lone wolf."

"Is this by any chance your poetic hour?" Illya propped himself on one elbow, a spark of humor half-hidden under shadowed brows. "Wolves hunt in packs, Napoleon," he explained patiently. "They’re known to have very fine social instincts. You could even call them affectionate creatures. That refers to the wolves amongst themselves, of course."

Napoleon bent his head to warm a cool shoulder with his lips and trace a path across to the graceful throat. "So show me," he murmured. "We have all night."

* * * * *


End file.
